Open data

At the Big Lottery Fund, we’re committed to openness and transparency. To support this, we publish our grant data as well as data sets and related information used in our research.

Sharing our data helps other researchers make use of our information. It also means wider audiences can find out more detail about the research we commission.

You can access our grant data from 2004 onwards below.

We’ve grouped our other data below according to the work commissioned.

Exploring the Value of Open Data Research

To support our open data approach we commissioned some research to explore what open data would be of greatest value for the Fund to identify, collect and publish. We asked Alice Casey (Nesta), William Perrin (Talk About Local) and Tim Davies (Practical Participation) to do the research. Stakeholder interviews showed support for the Fund to explore and develop a measured strategy for future open data releases, and has uncovered a range of innovative ideas around how to best use open data to generate new insights.

You can read the research report and view the recommendations for the Fund here:

What makes groups ready for social investment?

Reducing Re-offending

In December 2014 we asked our customers and stakeholders to share their ideas and experiences about initiatives to reduce reoffending. We also promised to publish our grant data on any projects related to offending or reoffending or those involving offenders, ex-offenders or individuals at risk of offending. Data sets containing responses we received and grants data are published below. More context on this area of work can be found in our blog

Note on the grant data set: We mined our data for any project details that included the term ‘offen’, in order to be as inclusive as possible.

Grant Data

Across our grant making the Fund is committed to transparency so that people in the lead have the information they need. We work with the 360Giving initiative to publish our grant data. We have used the 360Giving standard to produce a file of all the grants we have made from 2004-2015.